| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Jungle by Upton Sinclair: an imprecation. They strolled here and there about the courtyard,
and Jurgis listened to them. He was ignorant and they were wise;
they had been everywhere and tried everything. They could tell the
whole hateful story of it, set forth the inner soul of a city in
which justice and honor, women's bodies and men's souls, were for
sale in the marketplace, and human beings writhed and fought and
fell upon each other like wolves in a pit; in which lusts were
raging fires, and men were fuel, and humanity was festering and
stewing and wallowing in its own corruption. Into this wild-beast
tangle these men had been born without their consent, they had taken
part in it because they could not help it; that they were in jail
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Sesame and Lilies by John Ruskin: At every moment of our lives we should be trying to find out, not in
what we differ from other people, but in what we agree with them;
and the moment we find we can agree as to anything that should be
done, kind or good, (and who but fools couldn't?) then do it; push
at it together: you can't quarrel in a side-by-side push; but the
moment that even the best men stop pushing, and begin talking, they
mistake their pugnacity for piety, and it's all over. I will not
speak of the crimes which in past times have been committed in the
name of Christ, nor of the follies which are at this hour held to be
consistent with obedience to Him; but I WILL speak of the morbid
corruption and waste of vital power in religious sentiment, by which
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Chouans by Honore de Balzac: Bayeux, and the environs of Alencon. Her blue eyes showed no great
intelligence, but a certain firmness mingled with tender feeling. She
wore a gown of some common woollen stuff. The fashion of her hair,
done up closely under a Norman cap, without any pretension, gave a
charming simplicity to her face. Her attitude, without, of course,
having any of the conventional nobility of society, was not without
the natural dignity of a modest young girl, who can look back upon her
past life without a single cause for repentance. Merle knew her at a
glance for one of those wild flowers which are sometimes taken from
their native fields to Parisian hot-houses, where so many blasting
rays are concentrated, without ever losing the purity of their color
The Chouans |
